


Sun and Sky, Moon and Stars

by OliveTreee



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Loss of Parent(s), One Shot, Romance, Threats of Violence, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28469694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OliveTreee/pseuds/OliveTreee
Summary: It’s something she's seen in stained glass and religious texts, in passages of honor and scriptures of heroics. A knight kneeling before his sovereign, loyalty burning in his eyes and chest swollen with pride for his superior; it’s the image of Dimitri now, an image she subconsciously burns into her mind to be reviewed for the rest of her days. He is the noble prince of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and yet he kneels before her as though he is nothing, as though he is just one of millions of men who could have sworn themselves to her, and it’s the humility of this vulnerable notion that makes Byleth forget, for a moment, the sorrow of her loss.
Relationships: Dimitri - Relationship, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & My Unit | Byleth, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 62





	Sun and Sky, Moon and Stars

When he enters the small room the first thing he sees is her, fallen to her knees before the window that leaked dusk’s dull light. Her clothes are still wet with both rain and blood, the floor beneath her a puddle of diluted crimson that seeps further and further across the wood floors the longer she sits. Her back is to him and he can’t see the rise and fall of her breathing because her entire body is nearly vibrating with the force at which she trembles. Besides this there is no motion, no implication that she is anything more than a statue of marble or bronze. 

“Professor,” He calls softly into the room, the knob of the door still held tight in his gloved hand, but the title evokes no response from her. 

For a moment he’s tempted to close the door and let her be but then a cloud passes before the window and the light is cut off, and the sight before him is instalty made less angelic and more dreadful. Dimitri pushes through the waves of formality that always rise high when they are in the same room, the vessel of his desire bracing and conquering the storm for the very first time as he says a name he has only ever whispered into the late darkness of his dorm. 

“Byleth,” 

This does something to her, if only slightly. He sees a few drops of rain fall from where they were clinging to her hair, adding to the puddle beneath her as Byleth turns her head just slightly. Dimitri can only see a quarter of her face now, just the red rim of her eyes and the corner of lips pressed into a thin line, but it is all he needs to step further into the room and close the door gently behind him. The sound of the door clicking into frame makes tension drain from her shoulders just a bit, dripping down her body like the liquid that still soaks her as she turns back to face the window entirely. The idea that she relaxes only when alone in his presence makes something within him burn, but it is not the time to indulge in that fire now. 

He steps forward and pays little mind to the watered-down blood on the floor beneath him as he lowers to his knees beside her, eyes fixated on the pale ivory of her skin as she keeps her gaze from his. This close he can see the trails of what he knows isn’t rain down her cheeks, can see the dark eyes that look like they’ve been dipped in glass and the angry red that rims them like a chalky cosmetic. It’s the first time he has seen even a hint of sadness on her and he prays to the Goddess with every ounce of his heart that he should never see this sight again. 

For a while there are no words, no sound, only the pool of rain and blood that seeps further across the wood floors. The armored mannequins before them glow faintly as the dusk stretches further outside the window and as a warrior himself, he would be able to admire the way the mighty metal looks in this flattering light, but his eyes are focused on Byleth and she consumes his attention entirely. She does not say anything or turn her gaze from the stained glass for a while after he's closed the door, but she doesn’t have to. It is enough to be allowed to sit beside her now, in her greatest moment of grief, and he is content with silence if it means he can be near her. 

When she does finally speak it’s soft, the weakest he has ever heard, and it rips a part of his soul away. 

“Is this what you felt?” Byleth asks so quietly he could have missed it if she didn’t captivate him so completely, “All those years ago?” 

The question brings his own ache to the surface, puts the same pit in his stomach that always comes with Duscur. Instantly, the smell of smoke fills his nose and lungs and bright fires flicker before his eyes, and it takes a deep breath for him to not be overcome entirely by it all. Even after all these years the anger and despair do not die down, and Dimitri has to ball his hands into fists so tight that the skin of his knuckles is nearly translucent. It is a reminder and silent response that  _ yes _ , this is exactly how he felt and how he will always feel when he thinks of a family long since dead. 

She may not have lost three, but she had still lost  _ everything.  _ He knows she asks if it is the same because she’s feeling it now, that tightness in her chest that no air can remedy and the bile that sits in the back of her throat just waiting to rise if she should think of it in any greater detail. Byleth has so little experience with feeling, with emotions both good and bad, and he knows she is trying to comprehend the ache she has never known even a fraction of. To think that she is in such pain that even he has been unable to conquer for four years weighs his heart so heavily that he thinks it may be crushed flat. 

“Yes,” He manages to say, “It is.” 

His words bring more tears to her eyes, so much that they blind her until she blinks them away. They run down her cheeks in the quietest of brooks, dripping down her chin and onto the lace that covers her thighs. The sight of them both so quickly and at all makes him pause, breath coming to a shuddering halt as he watches the thin line of her lips turn into a frown. Dimitri doesn’t understand why his confirmation brings a new wave of tears, but soon she speaks and he thinks he might not breathe ever again. 

“I’m so sorry,” Byleth whispers, “That you have felt this for so long.” 

Some of the first words she speaks to him are  _ for  _ him,  _ apologizing  _ for pain she did not cause that was before the time of their acquaintance. Her father’s body is hardly cold and yet here they sit in his quarters, still soaked with the rain and blood, and the first conversation she can manage since they returned is for Dimitri. Byleth is in the worst pain of her life and yet it’s  _ his  _ pain that brings more tears, and the fire inside of him blazes far too brightly for him to ignore. It pulls him to his feet so that he could move in front of her and sit again, forcing her to pull her eyes from the light beyond the window and look at him. 

Byleth thinks he looks like a  _ god  _ in this light, with the glow of heaven behind him and the rain clinging to his blonde hair makes the very air around him radiant. If it weren’t for the sadness that tore at her heart or the air that struggled to stay in her lungs, she would think of reaching out and taking his face into her hands, teacher and student be damned. The look on his face was both soft and firm, a reassurance as well as an insistence, and she cannot take her eyes from it. 

“Do not think of me now, Byleth,” Dimitri replies, awed and disturbed by the very notion, “My memories are aged and I have learned to bear this pain.  _ You _ have not.” 

She sees deep amber, unwillingly replays the sight of her father’s eyes closing for the last time as he goes completely limp in her arms, and it rips a sob so suddenly from her throat that she can’t even think of suppressing it. Byleth buries her face into her hands and lets the whines tear through her throat, and it takes little more than a single devastated note for Dimitri to take her into his arms and hold her against him. Position be damned, formality be damned, everything be  _ damned _ , she needed him. 

As they sit on the floor, her cries filling the quarters entirely, Dimitri feels something inside of him swell and bubble hotter than his empathy ever could. More than pain, more than grief, there's anger that blinds him and fills the entirety of his world with  _ red. _ He holds her close and remembers the face of the girl who smiled as her blade sunk into Jeralt’s flesh, and the sight of her wicked face in his mind’s eye nearly drives him the rest of the way to insanity. 

She hurt Byleth, she killed Jeralt and therefore a part of the professor, and for that Dimitri hates her as much as he has ever hated before. He wants to rip the smirk off of her face, tear her lips from her skin and watch the wounds bleed, wants to dig his nails into the sockets of her skull and pull her eyeballs from their place and watch the crimson tears run down her face in rivers. Dimitri wants her  _ dead _ and wants it at his own hands, to see the life leave her eyes as he squeezes tighter and tighter to the column of her throat. Every fiber of his being is sent into a frenzy at the idea of easing Byleth’s pain through vengeance, through the violence that had taken her father in the first place. 

He pulls away from her and nearly shivers at the sight of her leaning further towards him, trying to stay in the warmth of his embrace. Dimitiri nearly abandons his notion and takes her into his arms again but the anger in him is still so demanding that he is able to fight against those desires. Instead Byleth is watching him through the tears that still cling to her dark lashes, nose and cheeks now splotched with red from her sobbing, and the sad sight feeds him the rest of the courage he needs to draw the sword from the scabbard at his side. The confusion in her eyes is quickly replaced with surprise as he raises himself onto one knee before her and drives his blade to the floor, the tip of it lodging into the wood planks as he holds tightly to the hilt. 

It’s something she's seen in stained glass and religious texts, in passages of honor and scriptures of heroics. A knight kneeling before his sovereign, loyalty burning in his eyes and chest swollen with pride for his superior; it’s the image of Dimitri now, an image she subconsciously burns into her mind to be reviewed for the rest of her days. He is the noble prince of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and yet he kneels before her as though he is  _ nothing _ , as though he is just one of millions of men who could have sworn themselves to her, and it’s the humility of this vulnerable notion that makes Byleth forget, for a moment, the sorrow of her loss. 

And the way he looks at her breathes life into her for the first time in hours, since her father breathed his last, and the light that manages to come to her eyes makes Dimitri have to hold tighter to the hilt. The wonder in her gaze would surely have brought him to his knees if he was standing but for now he must lean a little heavier on his sword and will himself not to tear his eyes from hers. He knows she understands the significance of this gesture, what it means to have the crown prince kneeled before her with blade in hand, but he is glad she does not stop him. He needs to do this, his heart would never let him walk away without making this oath to her. 

Byleth is so much to him, so much that his young mind cannot help but run away every time he sees her. The sight of her small, hesitant smiles bring a vision of white to his mind and he imagines her in a throne of her own beside him, one long leg crossed over the other and the crown, more feminine but still almost identical to his own, on her head glittering in the sunlight. Her tender glances make him wonder what her skin would feel like beneath his fingers, how she would sigh against him and how her body would fit pressed against his own. Dimitri imagines she will rule with the kindness she has always shown her students and that she will fit in perfectly to all the hallows and dips of his body. He may be young, may be her student, may even be just a boy in her eyes, but she is so much more than anything he has ever known. 

She is sun and sky, fire and air, and he is unworthy to kneel before her now, but he cannot help it. She is the beginning and the end to him, and every moment between, and Dimitri wishes with all of his cracked heart that he had the world to give her on a silver platter. For now though, he has his vow, and that is the closest thing he can give her to all of him. 

“Your father will not have died in vain,” Dimitri says to her so firmly it makes her sit a little straighter, “ I will not cease until she is  _ dead, _ until every one of the monsters responsible for this have fallen. For each of the tears you have shed today I will cut down ten of them and bring their  _ heads _ to you, Byleth. My blade, my crest, my very soul is yours to wield until every one of your foes has turned to dust. I swear to you on my crown and throne that they will all know the pain they have caused you, and they will  _ rot _ .” 

The wild look in his sapphire eyes should worry her, the rage and wickedness in them should burn her to a crisp and make her turn from him, but she cannot find it in her heart to do so. Something about the fury that makes his gaze so alive makes her feel something she has never felt before. If Byleth knew more about love she would recognize this feeling as being such and name it instantly, would take his face into her hands and whisper it against his lips, but she does not. Instead it is a feeling she cannot yet name and so she can do little more but sit and bask in the heat of it, in the way it makes her soul scream. The vow he has made to her sears itself into her very essence, burns its promise into her being and tethers her to him until her foes have fallen or the suns of their universe collapse in on themselves. 

As he looks at her now, Byleth feels for him the way she has never felt for anyone. Handsome features illuminated by dusk and vow embedded in the wood floor makes her realize that he is now entirely everything. With her father dead, he is the most important person in her world and the realization of it makes her hands tremble where they have fallen at her sides. 

Dimitri is moon and stars, water and earth, and she is unworthy of his oath but she does not reject it. She finds herself  _ wanting  _ to see the deep blues of his robes stained black with blood, wants to see this crazed look in his eyes again as he tears throats from necks and rips limbs from bodies. Byleth  _ wants _ to see him lay heads at her feet, craves nothing so much as she craves seeing the wicked satisfaction in his eyes as he holds them by the hair and presents them to her as though they are trophies meant to be displayed proudly on her walls. 

She reaches out with trembling fingers and takes his face into her hands, the blood still wet on her fingers smearing across his flawless skin but the sight just makes her stomach nearly turn completely inside of her. The blood on his skin makes the wicked look in his eyes so much more  _ enticing  _ and she does not think for even a moment that she should try not to smear more as she rests the tips of her fingers just under his ears.

Dimitri sighs at her touch, eyes fluttering shut as she caresses him in ways he has only ever dreamed of, and he wonders for a moment if he truly is sleeping. Her touch is as warm as he had hoped it would be and it takes every ounce of decency within him not to turn his face into her hand and press his lips to her palm. The look in her eyes captivates him so much that he does not even entertain the thought of tearing his gaze from hers once his eyes open again, the electricity between them both too much to bear and consuming him entirely. 

“Thank you, Dimitri,” She says softly, as it is the only thing she can think to say, and it is far more than enough for him. His name on her lips is a song itself, harmiones and melodies and all.

Dimitri loves her. He knows it better than he knows his spear or the blood that runs hot in his veins, that he  _ loves  _ Byleth. That he will love her until they have all turned to dust and far longer after that, until the very universe itself has exploded in a collision of planets and suns and stars. 

Though she cannot name it yet, Byleth loves him too. 


End file.
